Easement for greenway altered to help city project

Monday

May 6, 2013 at 9:59 PM

Revisiting a decision they made last month, Henderson County commissioners voted 4-0 Monday to ease conditions they placed on a mile-long utility easement through Jackson Park to spare the city of Hendersonville from losing funding for a major sewer project.

By Nathaniel AxtellTimes-News Staff Writer

Revisiting a decision they made last month, Henderson County commissioners voted 4-0 Monday to ease conditions they placed on a mile-long utility easement through Jackson Park to spare the city of Hendersonville from losing funding for a major sewer project. Hendersonville Mayor Barbara Volk asked commissioners to reconsider conditions they placed on an easement granted April 17, allowing the city to install about 5,500 linear feet of gravity-fed sewer pipe from Jackson Park Road, near the ballfields, north to Four Seasons Boulevard. The easement allowed the city to replace a 20-year-old pumping station at Jackson Park, which caused a major sewer spill in March 2011 into nearby Bat Fork Creek, with a $3.9 million sewage “interceptor” line. Seeing the potential for a new section of greenway, commissioners had made their approval contingent on the city allowing biking and walking along a maintenance road slated to parallel the sewer line. That would have required bridging three creeks.“As someone who walks on the Oklawaha Greenway several days a week, I understand the commissioners' desire to have additional multi-use paths in the county,” Volk told the board. “However, the timing and cost of this requirement present serious obstacles to completing the project.”The city was awarded a $4 million low-interest loan from the N.C. Division of Water Quality's Clean Water State Revolving Fund to replace the antiquated pump station at Jackson Park, Volk said. But to qualify, the city faces a July 1 deadline.City and county staff worked cooperatively to route the new sewer main through an area that would disturb the least amount of park structures and activities, Volk said. Together, they chose a path through a wetlands area along Bat Fork that requires permits from state and federal regulators.“If the plans must be reconfigured to include bridges and multi-use trails, at an estimated initial cost of well over $200,000, we would not be able to meet the deadline and would not receive the loan,” Volk said, which would delay the project indefinitely. Commissioner Mike Edney, who suggested making the easement greenway-friendly last month, said discussions with city and county staff convinced him to alter the easement's conditions. “It would be quite expensive to do the trails and to do the bridges,” he said. “I'm not saying that we'll never do it because I think it would be a great enhancement, but I don't want to jeopardize this project. It's a good project.”At Edney's suggestion, commissioners — with Vice Chair Tommy Thompson absent — deleted the provision that bridges be installed across the three creeks for bikers and hikers. But they added several new conditions to the easement:• The city will lay fine gravel suitable for biking and hiking on top of courser gravel along roughly 1,950 linear feet of the maintenance road. The county will maintain those sections after construction, replacing any gravel that washes away in floods.• The city will deed to the county a .98-acre parcel that is currently part of Field 8 at Jackson Park, “so that what we're using actually belongs to us,” Edney said.• The city will agree to grant a right-of-way across an 11-acre parcel it owns between Jackson Park and the county's new athletics and activities center at the former Hendersonville Christian School, creating the possibility for a new section of greenway between the two recreational areas.The new conditions “give the county something in return for the easement and gives all our citizens better access to our parks,” Edney said.Volk said she thought City Council would approve those agreements, adding that she appreciated the commissioners' willingness to revise the easement.In other business, commissioners approved their three appointees to a new 15-member regional water and sewer authority board recently approved by the General Assembly.From three nominees submitted by the town of Mills River, the board chose Larry Freeman as one appointee. By a 3-1 vote, Chairman Charlie Messer and Commissioner Larry Young were approved to be the other two representatives. Commissioner Grady Hawkins voted for Young and Fletcher Town Council member Sheila Franklin. Reach Axtell at 828-694-7860 or than.axtell@blueridgenow.com.